Tag Archives: Creativity

Weekend innovation tip: Think BIG like a kid

in Innovation tips

 

I watched one of my favorite movies of all time last night, .

Here’s a perfect example of how thinking like a kid again opens all types of possibilities for creative output when navigating a world where most people are used to the same old ideas. If you’ve seen the movie watch it again, you’ll notice all sorts of things that are happening inside your company right now that if you brought in some fresh thinking it’ll alter they way you see things.

 

This scene is specially telling, instead of reading marketing reports the boss prefers to go watch people at toy stores. Bingo!

 

Don’t be afraid to !

Must read innovation stories of the week: Mental models determine business models

in Must reads of the week

Much like humans have mental models that determine their beliefs about how the world works, businesses have business models that do the same. And, just how us humans get stuck in our own thoughts if we don’t feed ourselves new experiences, business models become irrelevant when they don’t evolve.

, and this means you have to start with the culture in your organization and how they view the world. You need to work on questioning the assumptions your culture has about how the world works, so it can start thinking about how it can work better for you.

. Want a new business model? Check your mental model first.

Innovation: respect the process

in Innovation, Strategy

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Master the instrument, master the music, then forget all that shit and play. – Charlie Parker

Some say innovation is predictable, I agree. But to a larger degree it is not because you can’t really tell where it’s going to come from and who will be holding all the cards. Right now you’re probably in the ‘innovate or die’ mindset, you’re also probably feeling frustrated because you’re reading blogs, following innovation consultants on Twitter to try and do innovation but you are not getting anywhere.

Let me help clear things up for you, . It needs to be nourished, it needs to be practiced, it needs to be mastered.…

What’s your creative thinking style?

in Career, Creativity, Innovation

Have you ever noticed how you come up with your ideas? Have you noticed how others come up with theirs? I’ve been thinking about this lately and seeing how on Twitter there’s no shortage of people tweeting ‘x ways to innovate’ back and forth (myself included!) it makes me think non-innovation people will get confused with so many ‘techniques’.

So how many ways are there really? infinite. This is a problem because most techniques are just designed to stimulate your brain to get it thinking in all sorts of ways but they don’t naturally come to you.

We must also remember that most people are put off by all of this ‘innovation’ talk, they just don’t care about the latest and greatest technique, they just care about the outcome and our job is to help them get there. So where do people like us who are trying to spread the religion of ‘innovation’ around start teaching the non-innovators? With what comes natural to us.…

Innovation is a habit

in Creativity, Innovation

Accepting reality has it’s advantages as it makes you focus intensely in the moment, but it also has it’s disadvantages because it puts imagination in the backseat!

Act different to think different. Easier said than done right? The truth is we’ve already , we just forget we did it. How is this possible? How is it that we lost that inquisitive mind? We just lost our imagination, threw the crayons away and got caught up in the reality of the adult world. That’s what happened!

Most innovations come out of some insight (aha! moment) someone had and it was all because this person was looking deeper and questioning the ‘believed’ truth of how something works. Just like kids, inquisitive people have a habit of questioning everything, looking for deeper insight by questioning the truth. Yet most people accept things for what they are, why is this? Because it’s safe, it’s that simple. We get trapped in automatic, mechanical thinking with no interest in asking why we’re doing whatever it is we’re doing and how we’re doing it.…

Weekend innovation tip: Go lateral

in Innovation tips

What if your new product or service was like a cow? How would look like? How would it work? Why would people want to use it?  Why would they hire you? Would they tell their friends about it?…Get the picture?

 

Sometimes when we’re looking for inspiration but can’t find it we get stuck, a good strategy to get ‘unstuck’ is to start ‘whatifing’. Just like asking ‘why’ five times is a good way to get to an insight, asking ‘what if’ opens your mind to seeming unrelated things you might not thought of before. Inspiration comes instantly like a bolt of lightning!

 

It’s no surprise that some of the most crazy ideas come from asking ‘what if’ a whole bunch of times because it forces your mind to look at something from a completely different context than before.

 

Check out this clever book 100 Whats of Creativity, written by Don the Idea Guy. The will help spark your creativity and lead you to someplace you’ve never been before.

Must read innovation stories of the week: Make new mistakes

in Must reads of the week

Make new mistakes? Yes, that’s right. If you always follow the tried and true, what worked before, being right, always having the same answer then you’ll never come up with anything original. To foster a culture of innovation you need to go off the same road you’ve always been walking in and if you feel a certain ‘fear’ that it’s not the best thing to do, then you’ll know you are on the right path because it means you don’t know what might happen.

Have the .

 

To achieve the impossible we must first try the impossible which is letting go of what worked before and trying something new.